Letty Fox (51 page)

A woman from Washington, a polite miss in her forties, stared at the crowd now laughing at this incomprehensible local joke. They went on with their horse stories.

Gideon slapped his knee and shouted, “Two zanies meet each other and one cups his hands and says, ‘Guess what I have in here.'

“Zany No. 2: ‘Brooklyn Bridge.'

“Zany No. 1 looks at his fists, and then, ‘No! Ha-ha!'

“No. 2: ‘Woolworth Building?'

“No. 1: ‘No. Guess again!'

“No. 2: ‘National City Bank?'

“No. 1: ‘Na!'

“No. 2 goes crazy, but finally says: ‘Six race horses?' “

Zany No. 1 looks carefully in his fists, and then says, defiantly: ‘What color, though?' ”

They shouted with laughter. The Washington secretary looked very much surprised and a cloud of anxiety shifted over her face.

“An Irishman goes into St. Patrick's,” shouted Gideon, “and he says, ‘Give me a whisky-and-soda!'

“Priest: ‘Shh! This is a church!'

“Irishman: ‘Give me a whisky-and-soda, I say!'

“Priest: ‘Shh, shh! This is a holy place.'

“Irishman: ‘I don't care what place; I take a drink anywhere,that's me.'

“The nuns pass two by two.

“Priest: ‘Look, man, see where you are, see where you are! Shame on you!'

“Irishman: ‘I don't care about your floor show; give me a whisky-and-soda!'

“Priest: ‘I'm ashamed of you. Aren't you a son of the Church?'

“Irishman (ashamed): ‘All right, I don't want you to think bad of me; set 'em up for the girlies too.' ”

The Washington miss, who wore a pretty old-fashioned straw hat wobbling on her head and a dark thin veil over her ears, so that she looked rather like an old Italian painting, now said, with timid eagerness, “That's very good. Do you like limericks? We go in more for limericks in Washington.”

“Go on, Miss Oaker,” said Persia.

Miss Oaker straightened herself and recited,

“There was a young girl called Bathsheba
,

Who passionately loved an amoeba;

The affectionate creature

Had little to teach her

As it tenderly muttered, ‘Ich Liebe.' ”

Gallant Stack laughed romantically into Miss Oaker's eyes and said, “That's a honey, but do you know this one?

“There's something gone wrong with Papa;

He shows tastes both odd and bizarre;

He brings home bears and camels

And other large mammals

And leaves them alone with Mamma.”

Miss Oaker laughed tremulously and leaning forward toward the handsome grass-gallant, she cried, throatily, “Oh, I know some really good limericks.

“There was an old sinner named Skinner

Who took a young girl out to dinner …”

She continued her Washington limericks for some time, her cheeks becoming pinker and her eyes prettier all the time. She had a trusting girlish manner as she leaned into the pool of floor out of which grew the company's legs.

“You don't mind if I go to the bathroom for a breath of fresh air?” asked Solander hilariously.

Luke Adams and I sat there mute. The three-husband woman hurled loathsome obscenities into the company from time to time, but without laughing; and the corn-haired girl told a joke or two which had the appearance of having been peeled out of one of Gideon Bowles's pockets, full of tobacco crumbs and old papers.

“But I, just the same,” said Gallant Stack, after looking at Luke Adams, whom he enormously respected, “am a romantic. At home, when I was a grown man, I used to go out for walks at sunrise with a little girl aged seven who simply loved the sunrise. She'd wake up an hour before dawn just to see it coming into her room and she was always down there waiting for me. The fields there are wet and green; and only cows and hedges about, mostly. And I used to go for moonlight walks at the University of Virginia with a very old lady who was the mother-in-law of one of the profs. She was infinitely charming. ‘Under this tree, as a young girl of sixteen,' she would say, ‘I had a romance; and on this little bridge, after I had played the harp, I stood pretending innocence, while I waited for a very flushed young man to find me and tell me he loved me. I was quite cool and unruffled. I thought myself a queen then. I used to think of the opera, you know, and the love stories of queens, and think, That is I!' There never was a sweeter woman than this old woman; she was one of the most beautiful women in the world. Do you realize, the most beautiful woman in the world becomes very aged?”

Meantime, Gallant Stack, by standing up, boxing the compass, courteously ogling the girl, and by changing his position with one excuse and another several times, had placed himself next to the woman from Washington, Miss Oaker. He took her hand, and said to her, “Did you hear in Washington about the forgetful bee who forgot where he laid his honey?”

When the company had stopped its roaring, he continued, “But I am more interested in romance; I am really a romantic. A knight went to the Crusades (that's an old legend), and came home after many years, weary and broken. As he neared his liege lord's castle, he saw a little bird on the path with a broken wing, in the way of his horse's hooves. He got down, picked up the bird, and put it in the tree. It turned into a lovely fairy, who said, ‘Noble knight, well hast thou lived up to thy knightly vows, to succor all tender and weak things, and, though thyself tired and famished, scarce able to mount thy steed, yet rememberest thou thy promises made before the altar of thy liege lord's chapel and in the Holy Land, etc. And I will grant thee one wish; think well, for it can be only one.' Said the knight, ‘I have no need to think about it. I am old and tired but have a great lust for life. I want to be in one respect (which he mentioned) like my horse.' Granted,' said the fairy; and the knight perceived that it was so.

“He arrived at the castle. They were overjoyed to see him. He advanced to kiss the king's hand and was allowed to kiss his cheek, while the cooks went out to kill all the shoats and bull-calves available. Thereafter, for three days, there was much merrymaking. The knight observed that during his long absence many pretty maidens had come to the castle, or perhaps they had just grown up; and he went round chucking them under the chin as was correct in these old-fashioned days. They responded nicely, and in due time, it was noticeable that they were very much attached to him, so as to neglect the other knights in the castle. Even the queen was much interested, if not, as rumor had it, positively infatuated. Enquiries were made, but no answer was forthcoming that seemed satisfactory. In the end the king came to the queen and said, ‘My dee-ah, do you know what makes the Chevalier so interesting to women? No weaving has been done in the women's rooms for a brace of weeks.' Yes,' she said. ‘What is it, my dee-ah?' ‘Well, of course, I know only by report,' she said, ‘but I hear that he could not be better hung, my dee-ah.' ‘But this is quite a new thing,' said the king. ‘Yes, only since his return from the Holy Land.' The king then proceeded to the knight's chamber, where he found him sleeping vociferously; and after assuring himself that the thing might well be as reported, he shook him and spake thus, ‘Sir Knight!' ‘Darling,' muttered the knight. ‘Awake, Sir Knight, it is your king,' said the king. The knight threw himself from the bed to his bended knee, a commonplace feat in those days, and which the knight had practiced regularly since he had come home, though not strictly with the king in mind. ‘Cavalier,' said the king, ‘tell me whence come your marvelous powers.' The knight related to the king all that you know.

“This amazed the king; and he thought, And this place is not more than a few hours' ride from my own castle, and not in the Holy Land. Though, 'slife, I should be willing to start even for Jerusalem. Well, just after midnight, he steals from the castle, saddles his horse in the dark, gets things on somehow, and sets forth, in higgledypiggledy array, true, but still he's riding. He travels four hours, the sun gets up, he travels all day, gets tired, turns back, is exhausted with looking, and when nearly home, there on the ground he sees a little bird. He throws himself from the horse, puts the bird in the tree, and the fairy appears with, ‘Noble and gracious king, thy most kingly action, etc.,' and he can hardly wait till she gets to the end of it. As soon as she gives him a wish, he says, ‘I want to be like my horse.' The fairy looks surprised and says, ‘Are you certain?' Yes. ‘Granted,' she says; and the king rides home. The knight and the king then lived happily ever after, and the ladies went back to spinning and carding.”

Miss Oaker looked much puzzled at this medieval romance, until Mr. Stack whispered in her ear, when she blushed and burst out into the immoderate laughter of reticent women.

“Did you hear,” shouted Gideon Bowles, “of the woman so thin that when she swallowed an olive three men left town?”

Then followed some olive stories (the things around which legends and stories collect are unexpected); and then Gallant Stack, who was rather drunk but in a Tom Jones fashion, said, “And I am always fond of fairy tales. Do you know the one,” he asked Miss Oaker, “of the young princess playing with the golden ball by the fountain?”

“I'm not sure—”

“She dropped it in, wept; it was returned by the frog, who said she could have it if she promised to take him home and put him in her little bed. She said yes; but forgot. But at midnight he came, flip-flop, and reminding her of her promise, and of noblesse oblige, he obliged her to take him in. On the stroke of twelve, precisely, he changed into a handsome prince. You'd be surprised at the difficulty she had, in the morning, in convincing the queen, her mother, about the frog and the ball.”

This went on for hours; they told the original
Shaggy Dog
, the original
Little Audrey
, the dog, horse, pigeon, and zany cycles, as far as they knew them; and hundreds of others, and not all of this order, zany or indecent, but long local romances sung out of his own experience by the green-acres troubadour, and some surprising incidents related by two young sculptors, young giants, who ran a studio together in Maine and owned a station wagon which they drove about. They could not get themselves or their works into anything smaller. One of these sculptors told true, horse, dog, and pigeon stories which had happened to him, like, “A taxi driver could not find the address and drove me round for hours, till in despair he put me out in a blind alley and there at the end was a dead horse, all blown up, with a red flag stuck in it.”

The other one told true adventures, long and fascinating, excruciatingly convincing, except that each account ended by his saying nonchalantly, “Well, that isn't true, you know, I haven't really a brother at all,” and so forth.

The party was a great success. Persia still retained some youthful looks and had a fondness for men.

Gallant Stack, who was married, was preparing the conquest of Miss Oaker; it was not difficult. He bragged with pretty boyish frankness about his success with ladies and its simple cause. The medieval legend was just a curtain-raiser to more naked stories of his own prowess. He was obliged in his business as wine salesman and publicity agent to roam the country. He did good business visiting college towns where the professors liked to think of themselves as sherry-tasters; and while he got the men drunk with samples, he raised a flush on the ladies' faces and a luster in their eyes by his stories. His accounts of their behavior were quite improper. The women present at Persia's party themselves rustled and tried to keep their eyes from starting.

Sometimes, he would break off and tell about the beauty of his wife, a strange little wanton with beautiful breasts, which she talked about as much as he talked about his particular beauties; and at other times he would give the impression, by his accounts, that their home life, in the humble flat that they occupied near Gramercy Park, was a good-natured saturnalia. He went on and on, trying to get himself pictured by the women as Don Juan, and when one of them remarked, “My husband is going away to Chicago this week end—” he stood up, turned to her with bright eyes and said, “Then I'll come and visit you,” and laughed, turning his fair plump face to the company coolly and continuing, “And I will make good, and so I would tell your husband if he were here! If he objected, of course I would not come, except by the fire escape.”

He departed with Miss Oaker on these words, leaving the other woman staring after him, flattered, startled, and on her face the beautiful mantle of the loved one.

I went away with Gideon Bowles and his sawney girl. Gideon Bowles, from his post far above me in the night air, belittled Gallant Stack, telling sneaky tales about him. Gideon left the sawney at her place, promising to come back in half an hour and spend the night with her, after he dropped me at my mother's.

“I want to see Mathilde,” he said, slapping his lips together greedily. “She and I have been very good friends and I haven't seen her for months.” But at the door he stopped, held my shoulders hard, kissed me on the lips, and then laughing boldly he strode away, saying, “Give my love to Mathilde, dear,” and the whole thing was an imitation of Gallant Stack.

Mortified by the persistent looks during the evening and the casual touches and kisses of these dull devils, I went to bed in great misery, and resolved never to go to my father's again. My father was a good-natured man who never restrained his company. I said to myself, “I am the same myself, I don't know the limit either. I hope it's really a sign of good nature and not of weakness; at least in me. In a woman it might just get to be weakness, and I don't want to get into loose ways.” I thought of Persia sitting there, surrounded by men, taking it all in, saying nothing indecent and amusing herself so slyly. “I prefer,” I thought then, “to be a generous fool.” No doubt, the fairy heard me, for it was granted.